So gay the dancing of her feet,
  So like a garden her soft breath,
So sweet the smile upon her face,
  She charms the very heart of death.

The young moon in a trance she holds
  Captive in clouds of orchard bloom,
She snaps her fingers at the grave,
  And laughs into the face of doom.

Yet in her gladness lurks a fear,
  In all her mirth there breathes a sigh,
So soon her pretty flowers are gone—­
  And ah! she is too young to die!

MAY IS BUILDING HER HOUSE

May is building her house.  With apple blooms
She is roofing over the glimmering rooms;
Of the oak and the beech hath she builded its beams,
And, spinning all day at her secret looms,
With arras of leaves each wind-swayed wall
She pictureth over, and peopleth it all
  With echoes and dreams,
  And singing of streams.

May is building her house of petal and blade;
Of the roots of the oak is the flooring made,
With a carpet of mosses and lichen and clover,
  Each small miracle over and over,
And tender, travelling green things strayed.

Her windows the morning and evening star,
And her rustling doorways, ever ajar
  With the coming and going
  Of fair things blowing,
The thresholds of the four winds are.

May is building her house.  From the dust of things
She is making the songs and the flowers and the wings;
  From October’s tossed and trodden gold
  She is making the young year out of the old;
Yea! out of winter’s flying sleet
  She is making all the summer sweet,
  And the brown leaves spurned of November’s feet
She is changing back again to spring’s.

SHADOW

When leaf and flower are newly made,
And bird and butterfly and bee
Are at their summer posts again;
When all is ready, lo! ’tis she,
Suddenly there after soft rain—­
The deep-lashed dryad of the shade.

Shadow! the fairest gift of June,
Gone like the rose the winter through,
Save in the ribbed anatomy
Of ebon line the moonlight drew,
Stark on the snow, of tower or tree,
Like letters of a dead man’s rune.

Dew-breathing shade! all summer lies
In the cool hollow of thy breast,
Thou moth-winged creature darkly fair;
The very sun steals down to rest
Within thy swaying tendrilled hair,
And forest-flicker of thine eyes.

Made of all shapes that flit and sway,
And mass, and scatter in the breeze,
And meet and part, open and close;
Thou sister of the clouds and trees,
Thou daintier phantom of the rose,
Thou nun of the hot and honeyed day.

Misdeemed art thou of those who hold
Darkness thy soul, thy dwelling place
Night and its stars; nay! all of light
Wert though begot, all flowers thy face,
And, hushed in thee, all colours bright
Hide from the noon their blue and gold.